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A day trip to New England: Part 1

Just in case you haven’t noticed, Josh and I are not sit around type of people. Sunday is our day to lounge, watch football and hang out around the house but every Saturday we wake up and hop on the computer to find what we can spend our day out doing (if we don’t already have plans). Living in New York takes this to an entirely new level because there is always something to do. For any Coasties reading, I highly recommend trying to get stationed here as long as you don’t have kids or at least don’t have school aged kids. Even though the traffic sucks and the cost of living is high, the experience of living here is truly once in a lifetime.

But we actually didn’t even spend our day in NYC. We debated between an art festival in Brooklyn, making the drive to Montauk or heading north again to Connecticut. Brooklyn was out quickly because we figured parking would be tight at a festival that brings in over 200,000 people and we didn’t want a repeat of last weekend. After going back and forth between the other two options, we finally decided on driving to CT since we’ve been to Montauk a few times before. I wanted to go to New London to visit the Coast Guard Academy and watch a football game but Josh wasn’t very interested so he suggested checking out Mystic and then crossing the state line and heading into Rhode Island too. We went with his idea and left the house by 9 am.

Of course what was supposed to be a two and a half hour drive turned into a three and a half hour drive because of traffic but luckily Ruby slept for most of it and the boys brought along a couple of movies to watch. If you’re wondering how our kids feel about spending so much time in the van traveling, for the most part, they’re fine with it. All three of them have been making trips like this since they were born (Theo even traveled in a cross country drive from NY to CA when he was two weeks old) and while they’re no strangers to the road, we do bring along lots of entertainment for them. Long drives like this one are some of the best times for talking as a family too. We’re all stuck together and, a lot of times, in new surroundings so there’s usually plenty to talk about.

Once we finally made it to Mystic it was clear that the drive was completely worth it. From the quaint little shops to the draw bridge over the Mystic River to the sail boats filled with children to the unbelievably beautiful Colonial houses that line the streets, this town is picturesque. Which is probably why I came home with over 100 pictures to upload from my camera. Of course we had to stop for lunch at Mystic Pizza where the walls are covered with photos of Julia Roberts and the trailer for the movie Mystic Pizza plays on a loop.

Afterwards, we took the kids for ice cream at one of the local, homemade ice cream shops on Main Street (because we can’t ever go somewhere new and not try some of the ice cream) and ate our cones as we walked along the river. Ruby was in heaven pointing out all of the boats and dogs.

We checked out some of the seaport and then let the boys explore a local toy store that ended up being incredible. So incredible that Parker kept cracking me up as he repeated over and over, “I made a mistake coming in here.” since I told them that we were only looking and not making any new purchases. In a very large contrast to last weekend, all of the kids were perfectly behaved and we had an awesome time exploring a new place. Our day wasn’t over yet though as we headed to Rhode Island to finish it off at the beach.